












































LONDON PEOPLE: 

SKETCHED FROM LIFE. 


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THE JURY 





























































LONDON PEOPLE! 


SKETCHED FROM LIFE. 


BY 

CHARLES BENNETT. 

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LONDON: J: 

SMITH, ELDER, AND CO., 65, CORNHILL. 


M.DCCC.LXIII. 


[ The riyht of Translation is reserved.'] 





























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PREFACE. 


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HE following 
Sketches, most 
of which have 
appeared in the Corn- 
hill Magazine, were 
designed to exhibit 
faithful delineations of 
physiognomies charac¬ 
teristic of different 


classes of London People as they appear, not aiming at 
humorous exaggeration on the one hand or at ideal grace 
on the other. The faces and figures were drawn from life 
in every instance, and under circumstances when the pre¬ 
vailing aspect and character of the persons selected were 
strongly brought out; my aim being to indicate the impress 


7 





















Preface . 

of habits and society upon the countenance of individuals 
who might be taken as types of the class they belong to. 

How far I have succeeded, it is for others to judge; for 
myself I can only say that I have endeavoured to depict 
living realities of character and expression; and if in seeking 
the real by using my pencil “ Up a Court” I have presented 
a specimen or two of ugliness, moral as well as physical, I 
can only plead that to omit the lowest class of people would 
he to sacrifice stern truth to fastidious taste. 

To Mr. John Hollingshead I am indebted for the descrip¬ 
tive letter-press of “The Excursion Train,” “At the Play,” 
and “ Covent Garden Market.” 

CHARLES BENNETT. 






CONTENTS. 

-»o*- 

Page 

At Westminster. 11 

Tiie Excursion Train . 31 

At the Play .:. 53 

Covent Garden Market. 77 

Up a Court. 99 

In the Square. 125 

t 

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1 






























AT WESTMINSTER. 


♦o*- 



HIS is Westminster 
Hall. You know it 
at once. To your left 
is one door for Parlia¬ 
ment; to your right are 
seven, for the lawyers. 
If you peep into the first 
of these legal entrances, 
you will probably see 
the cake-woman; and 
if the court is sitting 
you will certainly find 
an eager knot of grey- 
bearded, spectacled, wigged, and gowned barristers, engaged 
on “ tliree-corners,” Bath buns, and pennyworths of plum 
gingerbread. Passing through this reminiscence of school¬ 
days, you will bewilder yourself among a series of doors that 
shut one upon another. You will possibly avoid the cross¬ 
cutting and divergent passages, and, with the help of a sad 
policeman, lifting a heavy crimson curtain, you will take off 


11 























At Westminster. 


your hat, and find yourself in a court of justice. The first 
thing you look for is a “ place,” which you find high up in the 
back seats; and when this has been climbed into, with more 
or less noise, you find yourself facing the bench. By the 
bench, of course I mean the judges. They are peculiar. 
Their dress is rather startling at first, till you get used to it; 

f 

but it is nothing to their caps, which are represented by a 
little black spot on the top of the wig, and, therefore, may be 
said to out-muffin the muffin cap of the Bluecoat hoy. You 
may, perhaps, imagine that a remorseful, or, perhaps, shame - 
faced feeling on the part of the last invented judge has led to 
his contenting himself with a mere white spot. But he this 
as it may, from reasons of either dress or feature, our judges 
do not quite look like ordinary human beings; at all events, 
the casual observer is sure to deny them that privilege. One 
likens a celebrated dispenser of justice to a benevolent and in¬ 
tellectual gorilla; another believes that all judges give one 
some dim idea of a blinking, dozy kind of barn owl; a third 
suggests good old ladies—motherly persons, given to advice 
and management, and the having of their own way; while one 
more daring has even compared the celebrated and, as I said 
before, “ newly invented ” summer-up, to a jolly apple-clieeked 
old maid, sitting in judgment upon her married sisters. 
Perhaps it is not until these humourists see them as judges in 
their own cause that they discover them to be neither blind, 
weak, nor old-womanish. 


12 
















THE JUDGE. 


13 






























































































































' 

















. 






































. I 


























. 


• - 









At Westminster 


But between tlie back seats and the bench, look for the 
bar, and if you don’t exactly see the bar, you will the 
counsel, which is the same thing. Possibly you may hear 
them—for they are given to talking; to each other, if they 
have no better resource; but to the jury, or at all events to 
the judge, if they can find an occasion: some who, curiously 
enough, have round noses, round eyes, round mouths, and 
double chins, are sonorous, emphatic, and what we will call 
portwiney: others are ponderous, slow, chest-speaking men, 
but these are mostly tall, lank, and coarse-haired, with terrible 
noses—long, from the bridge downward, and blunt at the 
point; some, again, of the sharp, acid, suspicious sort—shriek 
a great deal; while there are a few—great men these—who 
are so confidential and communicative, that they seem (using 
a colloquial phrase) to talk to the jury “like a father.” 

Among the counsel who having nothing to say either for 
self or client, and who (as I suppose, consequently) amuse 
themselves with a great deal of light-porter’s work, in carrying 
fat bags full of important papers; there are many who make 
a great show of extracting valuable precedents from thick calf- 
bound law books, and having neither briefs to study nor 
motions to make, engage themselves in inditing the obscurest 
directions for further thick volumes, on the smallest slips of 
paper procurable, which slips—folded into the semblance of 
pipe-lights—they, at the hazard of turning illegal summer¬ 
saults, pass on to the short usher with the bald head. 


c 


17 



















At Westminster. 


But do not, for one moment, imagine that when yon have 
looked at the judges and the counsel and taken in the 
general aspect and bearings of the court, that you have at 
all exhausted its points of interest; on the contrary, the 
“interest” is all to come. You wish to know what is going 
on—is it debt or slander ? breach of promise or breach of 
contract ? and curiously enough, it is generally the latter. 
Contracts of all sorts, that are supposed to form a kind of 
harrier against law, and which, at all events, are held as 
safeguards or talismans, are mostly the direct road to that 
monosyllabic mantrap; some people never think of breaking 
a contract so long as it is merely implied, hut reduced to 
black and white they want to tear a hole in it directly,— 
indeed, in the sense in which it has been said that all mis¬ 
chief is caused by woman, you will find that every action 
at law has a “ document ” lying at the bottom of it—from 
promissory notes up to architects’ estimates, this will always 
hold good. 

Well, having seen both Bench and Bar, and wishing to 
understand what they are both engaged in, let us suppose 
a case. We will say that an obstinate man, one Bullhead, 
has his action against a plausible man, one Floater. Now 
the unconvincible Bullhead, who thinks that he has never 
yet been taken in, has somehow at various times, and upon 
the flimsiest of all possible pretences, handed over to said 
Floater sums of money to the amount of—say two hundred 


18 
















































































































































































THE DEFENDANT, 




21 






































































































































































I 




















At Westminster. 


pounds : between tlie possible inconvenience of losing so 
large a sum of money and tlie wish to show that his wisdom is 
equal to his obstinacy, he has brought the little dispute out 
of his own frying-pan into the judicial fire. 

There he stands, or rather leans in the witness-box, care¬ 
fully checking off his short answers with his forefinger on 
the sleeve of his coat, and screwing his face on one side, as 
if to concentrate all his intellect into the left eye that is so 
widely open; he looks very untractable, with his stumpy 
brows knitted closely over his thick stumpy nose; but what 
chance can he possibly have against such a cool hand as the 
defendant, Floater, Esq., with his very white stick-up hair 
bearing witness to his respectability, and his very black lay- 
down eyebrows covering the unbarnacled portion of those 
side-glancing eyes ? How gently his jewelled fingers are laid 
on the edge of the witness-box ! how shockingly informal the 
“document”—of whatever sort—proves to be during his 
examination—what a respectable man he is! Three letters 
after his name. Do you think he would have trusted himself 
in such a lion’s den as this if he were not assured of getting 
the best of it ? Oh, no ! this is the sort of thing—either in 
court or out of court—that he lives on, and lives very well 
too. Barring anxieties and worries, which all are liable to— 
with the exception of constant flitting, which, to some, people, 
is a mere matter of health, put on one side a few visits to the 
Queen’s Bench, and this is a highly prosperous man! He 


23 

























A t Westminster. 


has liis spring lamb out of its due season; asparagus; five 
suits of clothes and three servants; he has managed some¬ 
how to rear a large family, and, what is more, to dispose of 
them in various ways; he will, most probably, fail in accumu¬ 
lating money, may, perhaps, die in extreme poverty—there is 
no knowing; but as he is not a miser, as he began life with¬ 
out a farthing, and as, moreover, he is an easy-going sort of 
philosopher in his way, he may content himself to the last; 
and contentment, as we know, is a very hard thing to compass 
after all. 

Of course, and as usual, the jury hardly know what to 
make of itthe stout foreman inclines to the plaintiff in 
despite of law ; but he is evidently puzzled all the same ; 
the thin man with the bridgy nose, the cold man with the 
round head, and the argumentative juryman with the mutton- 
chop whisker, all look at it, as they say, “legally,” and decide 
in favour of the defendant. The jocular “ party,” with the 
curly red hair and the two tufts of cliin-growing beard, treats 
it all as good fun, and is ready to give his verdict for the 
defendant too, because, as he says :—“ He is such a jolly old 
humbug, you know,” which mode of settlement, however, is 
not looked upon as sufficient by his two neighbours, to whom 
it is a much more serious matter. One of these is trying to 
make up his mind, a feat he has never yet successfully accom¬ 
plished, so I suppose that as usual it will be made up for him by 
somebody else ; as for the other, after three hours’ reflection 


24 


















At Westminster . 


lie has really come to a decision, but, unfortunately, it is en¬ 
tirely opposed to everything that the judge will tell them in his 
summing-up, and of course they will all be led by his lordship. 

My lord is neither a mumbling nor a short-tempered judge ; 
he will take them in hand kindly, explain away both counsel 
for plaintiff and for defendant, and read them a great deal of 
his notes, which are a thousandfold clearer, fuller, and more 
accurate than the reporter’s “ flimsy,” although during the 
trial he has been distinctly seen to write four long letters, has 
gone twice to sleep, and has made seven recondite legal jokes, 
including the famous ever-recurring and side-splitting in¬ 
nuendo of calling upon the usher to cry silence, or “ Sss-h,” 
whenever the somewhat indistinctly speaking junior for the 
plaintiff rises—there will he no withstanding his clear¬ 
headedness. 

As you would imagine, these jurors have been in turn led 
away by the opposing counsel. For the plaintiff; they were 
made to admire the consummate common sense and discretion 
of the plaintiff, Bullhead, who having diluted liis ordinary 
keenness with that admirable faith in human nature, which 
is the keystone of all commercial transactions in this arcadian 
world, has for the first time in his life found his confidence 
misplaced by the conduct of the defendant. Said the 
advocate : Far be it from him to call Floater, Esq., M.Q.S., 
by any derogatory appellations; he was not a swindler, he 
was not a rogue, he was not a wolf in sheep’s clothing, he was 


D 


25 






















At Westminster. 


perhaps the victim of a misconception or a want of memory, 
but a very honourable man all the same—an opinion which 
the jury would endorse by giving full damages to his discreet 
and sensible client. 

But, said the counsel for the defendant—a foxy man with 
reddish hair, angular eyes, and a mouth that seems to have a 
hole punched in each end of it: He would not call Mr. Bull¬ 
head a villain of the deepest die, he would not say that he 
had laid a plot to blast the happiness of the domestic health 
of his unfortunate, his scrupulously respectable, and, he would 
add, his distinguished client; no, not he—far from it, he 
would suppose that an obtuseness of intellect on the part of 
the, at all events, short-tempered plaintiff, had led him to 
imagine, and so forth. And by the way, notice how these 
foxy counsel do cuddle themselves up, how they look askance, 
and wriggle about to show their honesty and straight¬ 
forwardness,—for indeed I suppose we must admit that they 
are honest and straightforward from their point of view, 
although they do shake their heads at his lordship whenever 
a particularly damaging statement is put forward by the 
opposite side, and although they do paint black with a grey 
tint, and find a few spots upon the purest white. Thank 
goodness, they have the attorneys to throw the blame upon 
when there happens to be any, and the attorneys sitting 
under the bar, and putting their heads together, have, I 
suppose, shoulders broad enough to bear it. 


26 



























28 
















































































At Westminster. 


These two do not look ingenuous : here is the smooth and 
the rough. The rough one never seems to believe a word 
that is said to him, while the smooth one appears to take 
in everything. The one, half shutting his eyes, draws his face 
down and his forehead up, into all the fifty lines of unbelief, 
while Smoothman drags his cheeks into such a lovely smiling 
look of faith in everything you have to propose, that you 
really begin to wonder how that underhung jaw and knitted 
brow came into the same company. Well, there is not very 
much to choose between—if Diogenes is given to sharp 
practice, Smoothman is a very bulldog for holding on wher¬ 
ever he gets his teeth in; and for twisting a grievance 
into court, for sublimating an action into a verdict, and a 
verdict into bills of costs, I think they are equally to be 
trusted. 

So we will say that this trial has gone against the angry 
plaintiff; that it is one more feather in the cap of Foxy, Q.C., 
and money in the purse to Floater, M.Q.S. ; that the jury 
are aware of having supported the glory of the English nation 
and the majesty of the law; that the learned judge, disrobed 
and unwigged, is no longer a good old lady, but a dis¬ 
tinguished gentleman ; and the ushers having cried Ssss-li all 
the day, which seems to be their responsible and arduous and 
only duty, are going home to dinner, leaving the reporters to 
pack up and follow. 

One word about the “ Press ” before we part. Just one 


29 


















At Westminster 


word to note tlie elderly press-man, who is of a shrewd, 
parroty appearance, and who has sat in court so many years 
reporting, that his grey hair has at last taken the form, 
colour, and texture of a judge’s wig : his aspect is severe ; he 
seems to have imbibed the spirit of that justice which he has 
passed his life in recording. 


:o 

















THE EXCURSION TRAIN. 


-♦o* 



ROM tlie mo¬ 
ment when we 
turn our backs 
on the half-way 
house, toil over 
the hill r and de¬ 
scend into the 
valley of old age, 
we are astonished 
to find how space 
and hulk seem to 
have diminished. 
The street which 
we remember in 
our youth so 
broad and impos¬ 
ing has shrunk 
into a close alley ; the river has become a ditch, the square a 
hen-walk, and the stately mansion which we once looked upon 
with awe, a dwarfed hut which we now feel bound to despise. 


31 
















































The Excursion Train. 


Our views seem to grow wider as we grow older, our desires 
less simple, and we wonder how we could ever have been 
happy while so cabined, cribbed, and confined. We laugh at 
the humble pleasures of our grandfathers, and are ready to 
welcome any toy that is startling and new. We throw our¬ 
selves into the arms of competing railway companies, because 
they can give us excitement, novelty, and change. As the rock¬ 
ing-horse is to the infant, as the pony or the flying swing is to 
the youth, so is the excursion train to the man. He enters it 
for a few pence, and swifter than the genii bore Aladdin from 
city to city, he is carried from town to country, or from 
country to town. Clerk, shopman, servant, costermonger or 
sweep, can cling to the long tail of the fiery steed, and ride 
rough-shod over the laws of time and space. What kings 
have sighed for, what poets have dreamed of, what martyrs 
may have been burnt for predicting the coming of, is now as 
common as blackberries and threepenny ale. The magic 
Bronze Horse is now snorting at every man’s door. He is a 
fine animal, if only properly managed, and may he driven by a 
child ; but woe upon you, if you let him break the reins. He 
has battered down stone walls ; hurled hundreds over preci¬ 
pices ; devoured thousands of stage coaches, stage-coaclimen, 
Thames’ watermen, whistling waggoners, country carriers, and 
Gravesend hoys. This is one side of the account. On the 
other side he has joined mother to son, husband to wife, 
brother to sister, friend to friend. He has cheapened food, 

32 


























The Excursion Train 


and tire, and clothing tor rich and poor; he has made many a 
death-bed happy, and many a wedding-party glad; he has 
improved Richard Turpin, and all his followers, off the face 
ot the earth, and has even taught the slouching gipsy that 
there is a cheaper way of travelling than going on the 
tramp. 

We are now all fond of excursion trains, more or less. At 
first, we regarded them with aversion; we then approached them 
timidly; we were lifted on to them by friends and teachers; 
we trotted them out slowly, holding our breath, and by degrees 
we saw that we could keep our seat, and yet glide past moun¬ 
tains, hedges, and trees. We then applied the spur, and 
were shot through dark tunnels on to the sea-shore, in a 
whirlwind of thunder and white steam. Familiarity breeds 
contempt. We learned to despise short distances, and twenty 
miles an hour. We asked for more. Our tastes grew arti¬ 
ficial, as our palate was destroyed by highly-seasoned food. 
We deserted our old pleasures and our old friends. Our 
withered tea-gardens on the borders of the city beckoned to us 
in vain, and looked at us reproachfully as we hurried past on 
our mad steed. Our old taverns pined for our presence ; our 
fishing-punts, on the London rivers, rotted with neglect; the 
backwoods of Hornsey were no longer haunted by our foot¬ 
steps, and the slopes of Hampstead became a desert. We 
pushed forward, farther and farther still, into the bowels of the 
earth. Like the wild huntsman, in the German ballad, we 


E 


33 
























The Excursion Train . 


glared upon passers-by, and straightway they became infected 
with the same restless activity. The whole town was inspired 
to move. Barbers, potboys, and milkmen disappeared for a few 
hours, and came back with strange stories of mountains, lakes, 
and caverns. Our boys were no longer content to read of 
inland wonders; they saved up their stray money, and went 
to the “ Devil’s Hole,” and the “ Dropping Well of Knares- 
borough.” Children taunted each other in the street with the 
distances they had travelled, sitting upon the laps of their 
mothers, as if in a dream. Surly cathedral cities were hustled 
by cockney crowds and Stonehenge was turned into a cool 
summer-house for Bethnal Green gipsy-parties. All this, and 
more, has been done within the last twenty years, and in an 
age which is too wise to believe in miracles ! 

Let us peep inside one of these excursion trains, going to 
Dover and back for half-a-crown, and take a few portraits of 
the travellers as they sit in a row. 

The magic bronze horse has slackened his speed, and the 
long tail of carriages is dragging along at the rate of a mile an 
hour. The young commercial traveller in the corner soon 
grows weary of a few minutes’ delay, even though it may save 
him from a damaging collision, for he has been born in an age 
of high-pressure speed, and has fed upon express trains almost 
from his cradle. He has been spending the Sunday in town 
amongst his friends, and is now going down to join his 
samples by a cheap Monday’s excursion train. His gaping 


34 






























A MILK AN HOUR. 


3G 









































































The Excursion Train 


lias a sympathetic effect upon the female a little farther up on 
the same side, and they both yawn in unison. 

The second traveller, nursing his hat with a painful 
expression of face, has fixed his eyes on an advertising placard 
stuck on the roof of the carriage. This placard gives a pic¬ 
ture of a man suffering from violent tic douloureux, and tells 
the passengers where they may apply for an infallible remedy. 
This mode of advertising is dismal but effective, and as the 
traveller gives an unconscious imitation of the picture with his 
agonized face, he inwardly resolves to become a customer for 
the remedy. 

The next passenger, with the bald head and the drawn- 
down cheeks, is one of those deceptive men whom you meet 
with in every society. He looks like a banker, a manager of 
an insurance company, or a lecturer upon political economy. 
You suppose him to be a perfect cyclopaedia of exact informa¬ 
tion—a man who has no end of statistics in his shiny head, 
and you assume that his taciturnity is the result of deep 
thought on some of the great problems of existence. You will 
he surprised to learn that he lives upon the severity of his 
appearance, and is nothing more than a head-waiter at a sea¬ 
side tavern. 

The sour-looking old gentleman, twiddling his thumbs at the 
farther end of the carriage, whose broad hat nearly shuts out 
our view of the drifting shower, has no business in a train of 
pleasure. He has joined the company at a side station on the 


37 




















The Excursion Train . 

road, and is going to get out at another side station to dun 
some poor tenants for hack rent. This may he a very neces¬ 
sary thing to do, but a holiday train is hardly the proper 
vehicle to help him to do it. 

The pace changes, and the magic bronze horse is tearing 
along at the rate of a mile a minute. 

The old gentleman in another carriage leans on his 
umbrella, and blinks as he feels his cheeks buffeted by the 
fresh air, laden as it is with the scent of new hay. The young 
woman next to him, who is running down on a flying visit to 
her mother, nurses her plump boy, and tells him to look out 
for grandma over the hills. The cheerful passenger at her 
side draws his face into a hundred wrinkles as he watches the 
trees, stations, and churches whirling past the window; the 
fat gentleman laughs, and shakes like a jelly, as he proves 
the speed by his substantial watch; and the Jewish-looking 
gentleman in the corner settles down into a self-satisfied smirk, 
as he feels that he is getting the fullest value for his half- 
crown ticket. 

In another carriage we are amused by the agreeable man. 
He knows the name of every station we pass, how far it is 
from London, and what it is famous for. He has travelled 
a good deal on railways, and is full of anecdotes. He advises 
some of the passengers where to go for a comfortable dinner 
when they get to Dover, and tells them all the points worth 
seeing in that ancient town. He pulls up the window to 

38 













































































































































THE AGREEABLE MAN 




F 


41 















































































43 
























































The Excursion Train . 


oblige the ladies, and is particular in asking how high he 
shall fix it. He carries a number of travelling appliances 
with him, some of the most ingenious kind, and is never 
without a pocket corkscrew. He even carries a shoehorn 
enclosed in a leather case, a folding cap in a pouch, and a few 
sweet lozenges to please the children. He is always ready to 
listen to a story or to make a joke, and to take advantage of 
anything he may meet with on the journey. 

“ Everybody’s sauce ? ” we may hear him say, as he 
draws attention to a well-known advertising placard. “ I 
never heard of such impudence! We may stand some 
people’s sauce—people we have a respect for—but I don’t 
think we can stand everybody’s sauce. What do you say, 
sir ? ” 

This last remark is purposely addressed to the disagreeable 
man, who sits with his good-humoured wife opposite, and 
who has been sulking ever since the train started. The 
disagreeable man is not happy in his mind. He objects to 
excursion trains, and yet he uses them. He cannot imagine 
why so many people go to Hover—he cannot see anything 
in Hover himself, but chalk and soldiers; certainly nothing 
to run after at such a pace. He thinks every town much 
finer than the one he is going to; every day much pleasanter 
than the one he is travelling on ; and every carriage much 
more comfortable than the one he is sitting in. He cannot 
think that hard benches are half so snug as the old stage- 


45 

























The Excursion Train 


coaches, or that being shut up in a close varnished com¬ 
partment is equal to riding on the box-seat. His round- 
faced pleasant wife tries to persuade him that everything is 
for the best, but he is not open to conviction. Poor fellow ! 
he merits some little compassion as he sits in an excursion 
train, for he is a broken-down proprietor of a stage-coach run 
off the road by a branch line of railway. 

As we draw near our journey’s end we peep into another 
carriage, and find there a most obtrusive traveller. We 
can give him no better title than the cheap swell, because 
he is a Frankenstein raised by the cheap tailor. He looks 
like a living advertisement for “ popular” dress and jewellery; 
for coloured shirts with Greek names ; for the latest style of 
cheap coat, and the latest extravagance in cheap trowsers. 
He is like a picture taken out of a certain handbook of East- 
end fashion, and usually labelled “ in this style, forty-two 
and six.” He smokes a bad, rank, cheap cigar, in preference 
to an honest pipe, and smokes it regardless of ladies or 
fellow-passengers. He lives for appearance, for external 
show, for seeming what he is not, and comes to the country 
chiefly to astonish villagers with his town manners. He 
firmly believes that he will marry an heiress of unbounded 
wealth, who will dote upon his turned-up nose and tobacco- 
scented hair. Under this impression he will show himself 
on the parade when he gets to Dover, with his hooked stick 
in his teeth, and his shoes fresh-polished by a boy at the 


46 




















THE CHEAP SWELL, 


47 



















































































































































































The Excursion Train. 


station. He leans out of the carriage-window, as soon as the 
train arrives within sight of the sea, as if the prospect was 
intended for him and no other passenger. 

hacing this cheap swell are two females, one young and 
the other middle-aged, who may be distinguished by the 
title ot the two bottles. They are mother and daughter ; 
but while the old lady is stout, flushed, vulgar, and not 
above carrying the meat and beer-bottle, the youngest wears 
tight kid gloves, an Eugenie hair front, and refreshes herself 
now and then with a sniff of eau-de-Cologne. The old lady 
has given her daughter a showy education, with a view of 
making her a “ better woman than her mother,” and has 
only produced a piece of affected gentility, — almost as 
repulsive as the cheap swell—who thinks herself too good 
for her company. 

These are only a few of the commonplace passengers— 
amiable and unamiable, grateful and ungrateful—who ride 
on the magic bronze horse, day after day, and are so crammed 
with wonders that they think nothing of it. They hear wild 
stories of railway accidents, of sleepy pointsmen holding 
Archimedean levers, who have power to hurl thousands into 
the arms of death. Like the soldier, however, who strides 
fearlessly into the battle, they are sustained by a belief that no 
harm will befall them. The commonest traveller, like the 
commonest fighting hero, believes that he possesses a 
charmed life. Without any scientific appreciation of the law 


51 


















The Excursion Train. 


of averages, any knowledge drawn from broad statistics, that 
the risk of railway travelling is so small as to be hardly worth 
thinking about, he trusts himself, his wife, and children on 
the fiery steed, and sleeps soundly while it cuts through the 
whirlwind and defies the storm. He rides by many ruins ot 
the past, and sometimes over many ruins of the present. 
The road he is on, with its trim stations, and its straight iron 
rails, may not be very picturesque, nor very suggestive of 
decay, but yet it is often as worm-eaten as the most crumb¬ 
ling abbey. It may have been built by sanguine capitalists, 
and may put on an appearance of thriving business, but a 
keen-eyed observer may often detect how sapless it is, and see 
its withered shareholders standing at the gate. The ex¬ 
cursion train, however, has small pity for these rich beggars, 
and passes them with disdain. It turns its back upon those 
who have given it the breath of life, and obeys only one law— 
the law of competition. It has often been accused of crunch¬ 
ing unfortunate travellers, but its food more often consists 
of railway shareholders. When it once breaks loose from 
wholesome guidance it devours the most promising dividends, 
tears up houses and lands, and turns its pathway into a 
howling wilderness. 


52 













AT TIIE PLAY. 


-*<>♦- 



ROPING lately amongst 
some dusty papers, try¬ 
ing to find a lost report 
upon British Tariffs to 
help me in some very 
dry statistical work, I 
came across an old 
flimsy play-bill that had 
rested in strange com¬ 
pany for more than 
twenty years. Its bed 
had been a tape-tied, 
docketed abstract of 
many blue-books, while, over its frail body were piled some 
of the heaviest poor-law statistics that ever a political 
economist had to read. 

This old play-bill was very yellow and very tattered, and 
I took it tenderly from the dark book-case cavern in which 
it had been imprisoned so long. As I looked at it with a 
feeling of mournful pleasure, it seemed to me to resemble 


53 





















At the Play. 


the skull of that dead jester which Hamlet preached over 
amongst the graves. It called up the memory of more than 
one honest fellow of infinite jest, whose quips and cranks 
were never to he heard again. It spoke to me with a 
delightful candour about names and dates which few brief 
chronicles of the time ever possess. I looked at its bare, 
simple record, and was able to trace wrinkled age still 
plastered up into a caricature of youth ; bad tragedy, which 
had somehow transformed itself into good comedy ; and well- 
paid pretension, ashamed of its low origin. An old play-bill 
is a witness that cannot lie, and it often tells us these blunt 
stories of popular favourites. Some actors are proud of such 
proofs of their early struggles, while others buy them up, 
like authors gathering in an early volume of milky poems, 
or a book which they may have sent out with a mistaken 
dedication. It is not every man who has risen, we will say, 
to a manager’s throne, who likes to see a printed list of 
names in which he figures as a make-sliift actor, sent on 
between the pieces to sing a song, while his more important 
brethren are dressing for leading parts. It is not every 
man who prides himself upon being an aristocrat in private 
life, as well as an artist in public, who likes it to be known 
that he was once the main prop of a surburban saloon, which 
struggled to give adulterated plays, without the legal sanction 
of a licence. It is not every lady who likes to see a record 
nearly a quarter of a century old, in which she was then 
54 
















At the Play. 


represented a little older than she wishes to be thought now. 
It is not every ornament of the stage who wishes it to be 
known that he was made, not born, and had to work his way 
upwards through a long apprenticeship of drudgery. 

The old play-hill which I held in my hand was also not 

without its lessons to me. It told me that I, too, was 

mortal, like the rest. I saw in it a reflection of my gray 
hair and my wrinkled face. It dragged me away from the 
present into the past, and opened the doors of enchanted 
palaces once more, that had been closed to me too long. 
I was carried back to the time when the coarsest puppet 
appeared to me as an angel without strings; when giants 
spoke to me as living, breathing ogres, and not as padded 
supers upon stilts; and when the vilest daubs of scenery, 
with a few gingerbread trappings, were accepted with joy 
and thankfulness as fairy-land. I had not then tasted the 
bitter apple of the tree of knowledge; I knew of no blank 
side to the medal; I had not peeped behind the scenes. 

The villain, in ringlets, struck terror to my heart; the 

heroine, in white, seemed to me all beauty and all good¬ 
ness ; the aged father, in a tow wig, who could not pay his 
rent, and who would not give up possession of his cottage, 
appeared to me as an injured martyr; the comic man and 
maid-servant, with the song of “ When a Little Farm we 
keep,” made me throw my sweetstuff to them, as a reward 
for their faithfulness to their old master; and even the 


55 

















At the Play. 

footman, in faded plush, who came on to sweep the stage, 
or to take off a chair, appeared to me as a gorgeous being 
of another world. 

My independent theatrical experiences began very early— 
perhaps before I had touched my ninth year. I possessed 
a knack of persuading those who had charge of me to let 
me have my own w T ay, and a power of making them believe 
that I should not abuse their confidence. The result w r as, 
that I was let out of a back-door when the whole household 
thought I was in bed, and allowed to feast myself, unguided, 
in the theatrical orchard, between the hours of six and nine 
p.m. My promise to return home by the latter hour was never 
broken, and whatever may be thought of the loose manner 
in which I was brought up, I learnt some sterling lessons 
in punctuality and respect for promises from this, which I 
have never forgotten in after life. 

The funds for my youthful wanderings in search of the 
sublime and beautiful were obtained from an old money-box 
—the nursery bank of deposit for sixpences given me bj T 
uncles and aunts. We all know how money can be drawn 
from such a prison-house. A knife is thrust through the 
mouth of the box; the box is tilted until a sixpence or a 
shilling is caught upon the broad blade ; and then the knife 
is drawn gently out with its precious load, as bakings are 
drawn from an oven. 

With the money obtained in this way—my own rightful 

5G 












At the Play. 


property—I crept out of that dear old back-door amongst 
the fowls, the unwashed coaches, and the stables, trotted 
along the hard roads to my favourite play-house, and took 
my place with the crowd at the gallery entrance. The 
company was rough, but good-natured, and I soon made 
friends with some of the older visitors. When the black 
door opened at last, with a rattling of chains, at least so 
; t then appeared to me, I was carried off my legs up the 
worn stone steps, past the dark, greasy walls, and under 
the flickering gas-jets, until I was jammed against the watch- 
box of the surly money-taker. I always felt a tightness of 
the chest at this point, but even then I pitied the man who 
had to receive my sixpence. He seemed to me to be buried 
in a living tomb, with no escape from suffocation. As far 
as I can recollect, he was stout and full-blooded, which made 
his chance worse, and his temper was not good, which only 
added to his danger. My thin sixpence, with tight grasping 
in my pocket, had almost become a part of my hand, and 
it seemed to me an age before I could detach it, pay it 
into the small hole, and snatch my tin ticket in exchange. 
During this time a number of taller visitors had bought 
their passes over my head, and I heard their heavy tramp 
on the stairs as they rushed to secure their seats. At last 
I crept under the arms of the crowd, struggled past the 
check-taker at the swing-door, and the orange-woman with 
hills, and tumbled over the chipped forms into my glittering 


H 


57 














At the Play. 


paradise. The gust of escaped gas and old orange-peel which 
welcomed me at the door was never forgotten. When I smell 
anything like it now, whether in chapel, lecture-hall, or law 
court, it always suggests a theatre ; and visions of old actors, 
old green curtains, and old orchestras rise up before me, 
which I cannot drive away. 

When I first entered my first gallery, I found men and 
boys lying at full length on the front seats, shouting out 
for their lost companions, and displaying the selfishness of 
human nature in the most violent manner. When, however, 
the excitement had subsided, and the whole jelly-like mass 
had settled down into something like order, a little play 
was given to more generous feelings. As an unprotected 
youngster I had nothing to complain of. I was invited into 
a good seat that I had not earned, was allowed to read the 
hard names in the playbill as payment for this kindness, 
and might have been well-fed with mutton-pies and beer for 
nothing if I had felt hungry. Much liquor was consumed, 
and no wonder, considering the heat of the place; but in 
spite of many bodily discomforts, the gallery folks, especially 
in the front row, contrived to get more enjoyment for their 
sixpences than most of the box visitors did for their half- 
crowns. When I thought that my time was nearly up, I 
tore myself away from the scene of enchantment on the 
stage, and asked an old gentleman at the back of the gallery 
(old gentlemen go to galleries, sometimes, like Charles Lamb 


58 






















THE GALLERY 









































































. 

. 
































At the Play. 

and his sister) what the hour was by his watch. His answer 
warned me to be off, and punctuality in my first engagement 
obtained me permission to go again. 

In this way I visited my favourite theatre many times, 
and saw its fortune flickering like a candle in a high wind. 
It guttered down at last and finally went out, hut not without 
a severe struggle. Its prices were lowered one half, all 
through the house ; and instead of crowding into the gallery, 
as I once did, for sixpence, I walked coolly into the pit 
like a young gentleman. Its old company went away, one 
by one, and one by one a new company arrived to supply 
their places. The old company were sterling actors of 
force and dignity, who kept themselves to themselves, as 
actors should do; the new company were mostly poor, 
ragged makeshifts, collected from the Theatre Koyal, Salisbury 
Plain, and sucli-like dramatic nurseries. In proportion as 
they knew little of their business, or had no real calling 
for it, so did they hang about the front of the house, 
making friends of the audience, and touting for customers 
at their frequent benefits. By degrees the drama got more 
and more neglected. The check-takers also grew careless; 
and often when money was most wanted behind the scenes 
there was nobody to take it before them. You could 
sometimes walk in and out along the half-lighted passages 
unquestioned. Apologies for shortcomings were always being 
made by the unfortunate manager. One night the band— 


61 




















At the Play. 


the devoted band—which had dwindled down like the 
celebrated something at the battle of something else—sum¬ 
moned spirit enough to strike, before they were starved 
into abject submission, and the play was, therefore, scrambled 
through without music. Wrong scenes were often pushed 
on by rebellious scene-shifters with an air that told you 
to come and alter them yourself, if you were not satisfied. 
The theatre was often closed for two or three days, “ for 
repairs,” and opened again suddenly—unannounced—looking 
more dirty than ever. At last the drama was given up, and 

a mixed entertainment was invented, consisting chiefly of 

* 

a song, an experiment with laughing gas, another song, a 
clog-hornpipe, a recitation, a little tumbling, and some 
imitations of popular actors. I kept faithful to the old 
house through all its changes, in a spirit which I had 
probably caught from the domestic dramas, and never once 
broke my compact to be home as the clock struck nine. 

With this experience of the inside of a play-house, gained, 
so to speak, underground, I was much amused to hear one 
day that a family friend meant to give me a treat. He 
was a schoolmaster by profession, but not my schoolmaster, 
and though he objected to theatres upon principle (I never 
knew exactly what he meant by that), he saw no harm in 
going to a play-house during Passion-week to hear an 
astronomical lecture, illustrated by an Orrery. That was 
what he called amusement and instruction combined; so 


62 































. 





















. 














































. 
















































































, 











PASSION WEEK AT THE PLAY. 




































At the Play. 


off we started, with the full family sanction, to the appointed 
theatre. 

Those only who have been to a playhouse under these 
circumstances can realize the effect which such a lecture has 
upon a cheerful, brilliant building. The empty orchestra 
was like a chilling tank of cold water, the silent stage, half 
filled with a few tables and the lecturer’s apparatus, was 
like a deserted shop; while the bare benches and the 
gaping boxes made the few people in the pit huddle together 
for warmth. They were mostly country people, who probably 
thought they were seeing an ordinary play, or persons who 
came to perform a solemn duty by learning something about 
the “solar system.” If their faces were any guide to their 
feelings, they looked bewildered and unhappy, with the 
exception of one individual, who seemed to despise the 
wonders of the universe. 

This was the entertainment—amusing and instructing— 
which my guide had brought me to for a treat. My insolvent 
theatre, in its most degraded period, was never as dull as 
this. When the lecturer came on with a jaunty air, and 
began to patronize, without clearly explaining, the Infinite, 
I thought I knew his voice and manner, although he was 
disguised in very clerical evening dress. His style of playing 
with the Orrery—an apparatus, by the way, which was most 
creaking and unmanageable—was so like that of a juggler 
handling the cups and balls, that I watched him still closer, 


i 


65 




























At the Play. 


instead of picking my cap to pieces, as I, at first, felt inclined 
to do, and soon traced in him the broken-down manager 
of my insolvent theatre. I was about to impart my know¬ 
ledge, with youthful confidence, to my guide, when w T e were 
interrupted by a discontented mariner, who had drifted into 
this unhappy port in search of amusement. 

“ Hi, mate,” he said, loudly, to my severe companion, 
after a number of preparatory grunts, “ when’s the broad¬ 
sword combat goin’ to begin ? ” 

My severe companion knew nothing ahoat broad-sword 
combats, though I did, and he treated the question with 
swelling contempt. The sailor, baffled in this quarter, 
addressed himself at once to the lecturer, and loudly de¬ 
manded his money hack, when he was told that he would 
see no play. I need scarcely say that I secretly sympathized 
with the sailor. He looked round the house, to make sure 
that he was in a theatre, and then loudly shouted for the 
British Drama. He was coaxed out, at last, by one of the 
door-keepers; and the lecturer, probably glad of an excuse 
to hurry through his lecture, professed to he so disturbed 
by the interruption, that he could hardly tell the sun from 
the moon. 

As we were going home a little earlier than we should other¬ 
wise have done, my severe guide mourned over the instruction 
we had been deprived of by a rude boor; and, in a moment 
of weakness, anxious to show my knowledge, I told him 
66 





G7 



























































































* 


■ 














. 












\ 

i 



69 
























































































































































































At the Play . 


the story of my stolen visits to the play, and my recognition 
of an old hack entertainer in the lecturer. My youthful 
confidence was abused; my story was carried home, no 
doubt with a good intention, and I was tried by a full family 
court-martial. As I showed no particularly leprous stains, 
and had kept my character for punctuality in returning 
from my evening wanderings, I and those who had helped 
me were fully pardoned. It was held, however, that as 
I had seen nothing but the lowest dramatic models, my 
taste was possibly corrupted; and to remedy this, I was 
to be put through a course of legitimate play-going. From 
this happy moment I went the whole round of the leading 
theatres. I was taken to huge temples where tragedy held 
undisputed sway, and where misguided country visitors were 
often made as unhappy by the dagger and the bowl, as those 
other country visitors had been by the Orrery and the 
astronomical lecturer. 

I was taken to smaller theatres, where comedy and farce 
were served out with no niggardly hand, and where the 
whole roaring, swaying audience only presented two kinds 
of faces—one laughing at the piece of humour just caught, 
the other getting ready to laugh at the joke to come. 

From this feast of merriment I passed to another small, 
and far less gorgeous, playhouse—to the Theatre Royal, 
Purgatory, in fact, where no one could sit, or see, or breathe, 
or hear, in comfort; where every man’s knee was against 

71 

















At the Play. 


every man’s back; where hats and little hoys were crushed ; 
but where every one crowded to be entranced with high 
melodrama. No one thought of the cramp, the draught, or 
the heat, while the longest but most interesting of stories 
was being worked out on the stage, with incidents that made 
the pit visitors gape with terror. 

From melodrama and its excitement, which sent me home 
with flushed cheeks and staring eyes, I was taken to the 
opera, where everything was placid, refined, and handled 
with kid gloves. 

It was long before I took kindly to this last theatrical 
feast, although tempted by the sugared melodies of the 
immortal Barber of Seville. 

Musing over my old play-bill, surrounded by hard facts, 
I was reminded that life has an imaginative side, wdiich it 
is wise to nourish. It is not well that little children should 
be crammed with play-going, as I was in my youth, until 
they find they have exhausted a refining pleasure in the hour 
when they most require it. Let them go in liberally 
measured moderation to all play-houses,—houses of panto¬ 
mime and burlesque, of comedy and farce, of opera, melo¬ 
drama, and play, of tragedy with Hamlet a la Tom Sayers, 
or Hamlet a la mode; let them go to all. It is part of 
the education of life. No harm, but much good will come 
from it; let them go to all. 


72 
































































































COVENT GARDEN MARKET. 





HE two great national 
theatres on one side, 
a churchyard full of 
mouldy but undying 
celebrities on the other, 
a fringe of houses stud- 
den in every part with 
anecdote and history, 
a colonnade often more 
gloomy and deserted 
than a cathedral aisle, 
a rich cluster of brown 
old taverns — one of 
them filled with the 
counterfeit present¬ 
ment of many actors 
long since silent—who scowl or smile once more from the 
canvas upon the grandsons of their dead admirers : a some¬ 
thing in the air which breathes of old books, old pictures, old 
painters, and old authors ; a place beyond all other places one 


77 


















































Covent Garden Market. 


would choose in which to hear the chimes at midnight; a 
crystal palace—the representative of the present—which peeps 
in timidly from a corner upon many things of the past; a 
withered bank that has been sucked dry by a felonious clerk ; 
a squat building, with a hundred columns and chapel-looking 
fronts, which always stands knee-deep in baskets, flowers, and 
scattered vegetables; a common centre into which Nature 
showers her choicest gifts, and where the kindly fruits of the 
earth often nearly choke the narrow thoroughfares ; a popu¬ 
lation that never seems to sleep, and that does all in its power 
to prevent others sleeping; a place where the very latest 
suppers and the earliest breakfasts jostle each other on the 
footways;—such is Covent Garden Market with some of its 
surrounding features. 

In speaking of many open town neighbourhoods like this, 
it is the fashion to call them the lungs of London. Covent 
Garden, however, is something more than this ; it is one of 
the most pleasant, most necessary, and most important feeders 
of the metropolitan stomach. We cannot do without the 
greasy shambles of Newgate Street, the sloppy square of 
Billingsgate, and the fluffy recesses of Leadenliall; but Covent 
Garden is the only food market in London which has ever 
been chosen as a favourite lounging-place. Some of that old- 
fashioned popularity still clings to it which it had when it 
was a grand square, or piazza, two centuries ago, long after 
the time when it was a monastic garden attached to the 


78 



















Covent Garden Market . 


Convent of Westminster. A few squatting hucksters, who 
were driven by local changes from the sides into the centre, 
first gave a trading stamp to the place, and this character 
it has never lost. It is the oldest and largest existing vege¬ 
table market in London ; founded by that rule of touch which 
can alone create a great market, and without which joint-stock 
corporations and Acts of Parliament, when they build such 
places, only pave the way for bankruptcy and shame. 

If any student of life wishes to learn a substantial lesson 
in the law of supply and demand, he had better rise before 
daybreak on any Saturday morning, and spend a few early hours 
in Covent Garden Market. In summer or winter, spring or 
autumn, there is always plenty to be seen ; but as he belongs 
to a class who are supposed to be in bed, and whose presence 
is resented like that of a master in the kitchen, he had better 
keep his eyes wide open and stand out of the way. 

He will see a toiling, pushing crowd, at least fourteen 
hundred strong, consisting of about five hundred unlicensed 
porters, basket-women, carters, and hangers-on ; five hundred 
more of the regular ticket porters, holding badges issued by 
Mr. Gardiner, the Duke of Bedford’s market-manager, and 
three or four hundred market-gardeners and salesmen. He 
will see a mountain range of cabbages, dug into by active 
labourers, and toppled over on to the pavement; columns of 
baskets, piled one upon another, moving rapidly on men’s 

heads through the swaying mass ; long files and solid squares 

79 



























Covent Garden Market. 


of carts and waggons, without horses—the tired animals 
being housed in adjoining stables; knots of men eagerly 
settling prices under the broad-shaded gas lamps ; and dense 
forests of baskets and packing-cases, full of apples and 
potatoes, which it seems impossible to pierce. At every point 
he will meet with confusion and excitement; will hear the 
rumbling murmur of a thousand shouting voices ; and will 
see few men who are not perspiring like a Turkish bather. 
His attention will most probably be arrested by some burly 
agriculturist, mopping his scanty hair with a fiery-coloured 
pocket-handkerchief—a model of the producer—a tiller 
of the fruitful earth—who stands in smiling happiness 
amongst the riches which he has succeeded in bringing to 
the market. 

The growth of London has pushed this market-gardener 
gradually into the country; and now, instead of sending up 
his produce by his own waggons, he trusts it to the railway, 
and is often thrown into a market-fever by a late delivery. 
To compensate him, however, for the altered state of the 
times, he often sells his crops like a merchant upon ’Change, 
without the trouble of bringing more than a few hand-samples 
in his pockets. He is nearly seventy years of age, but looks 
scarcely fifty, and can remember the time when there were ten 
thousand acres of ground within four miles of Charing Cross 
under cultivation for vegetables, besides about three thousand 
acres planted with fruit to supply the London consumption. 


80 





















































































































































































Covent Garden Market. 


He has lived to see the Deptford and Bermondsey gardens 
curtailed; the Hoxton and Hackney gardens covered with 
houses; the Essex plantations pushed farther off; and the 
Brompton and Kensington nurseries—the home of vegetables 
for centuries—dug up and sown with International Exhibition 
temples, and Italian gardens that will never grow a pea or 
send a single cauliflower to market. He has lived to see 
Guernsey and Jersey, Cornwall, the Scilly Islands, Holland, 
Belgium, and Portugal, with many other more distant places, 
competing with the remote outskirts of London bricks and 
mortar; and has been staggered by seeing the market sup¬ 
plied with choice early pease from such an unexpected quarter 
as French Algeria. 

Our visitor may next turn his eyes in another direction, 
and see a representative of the new order of things—in the 
person of a ducal-looking wholesale distributor, an enter¬ 
prising salesman. 

It seems as if this ornament of the market, in introducing 
the auction style of business in conducting his sales, has 
caught something of the spirit which animated a late neigh¬ 
bour, the celebrated Mr. George Bobins. He never attempts 
to rival that florid style of eloquence which flourished so 
successfully for many years under the now dismal colonnade ; 
he never ventures to allude to the clatter of the nightingales, 
and the dreadful litter of the rose-leaves on the acres of 

vegetation which he disposes of in the course of the year ; 

65 













Covent Garden Market, 


but this may only be for want of encouragement amongst his 
rather uncultivated audience. 

Immediately facing him, in the surrounding crowd, are a 
group of retail distributors: the laughing first-class green¬ 
grocer, from a back street in Mayfair, who comes down to 
the market in a sporting dog-cart; the second-class green¬ 
grocer, from Kennington or Holloway; and the third-class 
distributors, who are known as costermongers. 

The second-class distributor is trying the higgling of the 
market, and is offering all the money in his pocket for a 
basket of apples; while the two costermongers are engaged in 
working out an intricate calculation about a compound bid by 
a peculiar process known as pantomimic arithmetic. These 
last two men are still the representatives of a class who 
number between three thousand and four thousand; who 
borrow their market money, their barrows, and their baskets 
from small capitalists at enormous interest and rents, and 
yet who contrive to buy one-tenth of the whole produce which 
comes to this important market. The quantities of such 
produce sold here annually in favourable seasons may be now 
stated at between eight and nine hundred thousand pottles of 
strawberries, forty-seven or forty-eight millions of cabbages, 
two millions and a half of cauliflowers, between three and 
four hundred thousand bushels of pease, nearly a million of 
lettuces, and six hundred thousand bushels of onions. The 
annual amount of money paid for vegetables and fruit in this 

8G 















THE RETAIL DISTRIBUTORS. 


87 





















































89 












































































. 














Covent Garden Market. 


market is now nearly four millions sterling, notwithstanding 
the produce intercepted on its road; for Covent Garden still 
largely supplies Spitalfields, Farringdon, the Borough, and a 
host of inferior markets. Its expenses for sweeping away 
rubbish alone amount to 600Z. a year. The costermongers, 
of course, only buy the inferior vegetables and fruits—the 
third-class and damaged qualities, and when they cannot deal 
to advantage in this produce, they trot olf to Billingsgate, for 
a late speculation in fish. 

The working distributor—the market porter—is a labourer 
whose services, either with or without a badge, are in con¬ 
stant requisition. He fetches and carries : he tugs sacks of 
potatoes from groaning waggons, and carries them into the 
body of the market to their appointed salesman ; and, when 
sold, he carries them away again to carts more or less rickety, 
for the purchasing greengrocers. Unlike many intellectual 
impostors who strut about for years without being found out, 
he really gets his living by the hardest head-work. He 
believes that he can walk under anything which can he lifted 
on his head and shoulders, and has no fear of slipping on a 
piece of cabbage-leaf or orange-peel, and being crushed under 
his load. Some years ago when the Kentish planters used to 
send their produce by water to the Strand wharves, he used 
to toil up the steep river-side incline from the “ Fox-under- 
the-Hill,” with something like two hundredweight upon his 
hack, and trot down again with the money he received to 


91 














Covent Garden Market. 


spend it in drink. The humane clerk of the market, however, 
long before the Kentish planters forsook the barges for the 
luggage-trains, put a stop to this heavy horse-like work, 
though he had no power to improve the habits of the men. 
Most of them are Irishmen, some few are Jews, and many are 
costermongers who have failed in their little speculations. 
They are handy labourers at moving anything in the shape of 
furniture, and will crawl up a staircase with a heavy piano on 
their backs like some strange elastic reptile whom nothing 
can squeeze flat. They have a strong taste for sporting in its 
lowest forms; are often the owners of square-headed bull- 
terriers, and are sometimes backed for small prize-fights and 
small running-matches. The day when “Jones of Covent 
Garden” has to fight or run “ Jones of Billingsgate ” is one 
on which the market labour is a little more roughly performed 
than usual. 

The female counterpart to this Atlas-of-all-work is another 
working distributor—the old basket-w T oman. 

She carries lighter weights on her battered bonnet than 
the market-porters, and protects her head with a stuffed 
circular pad, which looks like a dirty chaplet. She is thin 
and weather-beaten, is cheerful at her work, and looks 
forward, perhaps, to keep a small apple-stall when she grows 
too stiff for labour. Sometimes she starts in what she con¬ 
siders the full vigour of her career (about the age of sixty) as 
the owner of an early breakfast-stall, where she serves out 


92 





























































































- 


















































































Covent Garden Market. 


thick coffee and dark bread-and-butter to cabmen, carters, and 
porters. At these stalls the coffee has one merit — it is 
always scalding hot; and in the intervals of blowing it cool, 
the talk (in cold weather) always turns upon chilblains. All 
these night-workers lead a hard life, always dreaming of 
better days, and their cheerfulness and patience form one 
of those holy miracles which we see but cannot explain. 

When our visitor has tired himself out amongst the 
labourers (for it is very fatiguing for idle people to look at 
work), he may wish for a change; and we may recommend a 
stroll, much later in the day, amongst the flowers, fruits, and 
society of the middle avenue. Here he will find himself in a 
land where the seasons seem to be without force; where 
strawberries as large as pincushions are companions of the 
brownest nuts, and where yellow oranges, in baskets like 
Panama hats, are nestling by the side of rosy cherries. The 
whole world is ransacked to furnish this museum of luxuries, 
and even China contributes her dried fruits under the name of 
lychees. The snow may lie thickly outside, but the flowers 
always blossom within, and the “ litter of rose-leaves ” (to use 
Mr. Kobins’ immortal phrase again) is ceaseless in the little 
bowers where the nosegays are prepared for weddings. Won¬ 
derful stories are told of troops of girls who earn an easy 
living in putting together these love-offerings; and of little 
fragrant shops, half full of flower-pots and pineapples, where 
enormous fortunes are made, and where a hundred nimble- 


95 



















Covent Garden Market. 


fingered persons are employed shelling pease during the 
height of the season. 

When our lounger has tried in vain to outstare the dark¬ 
eyed Jewesses who watch him from behind a breastwork of 
seed-bags and account-books in little inner counting- 
houses ; when he has mourned with those who buy chaplets 
at the herbalist’s, and smiled with those who purchase 
wedding-presents at the florist’s ; w T hen he is weary of watch¬ 
ing the carriages which draw up at the end of the avenue— 
some of them filled with children w 7 ho look like chirping 
canaries in a cage—he may possibly catch a glimpse of 
himself in a mirror, as he is cheapening a basket of peaches, 
and may recognize a picture of that all-devouring, never-to- 
be-satisfied monster whose demand is the creator of all this 
ever-flowing supply. 

























































































































UP A COURT. 


-♦o* 



NGEL COURT 
is a narrow pas¬ 
sage, not very 
easy of access, 
which makes a 
hold attempt to 
run through from 
Yere Street, Clare 
Market, into 
Lincoln’s Inn 
Fields, and is 
only frustrated 
by the dead wall 
which forms the 
hack of a large 
house in that 
legal domain. 
Its entrance is 
adorned with an iron gate, in bad condition, and breast high— 
a melancholy piece of iron-work, which neither keeps the dogs 
L.ofC. 99 




















































Up a Court. 


out nor tlie children in, and can scarcely be said to lend an 
air of exclusiveness to the choky opening (cut right through a 
house) which it obstructs; its purpose, indeed, would seem 
to be a parochial mystery. It invariably produces a fit of 
exasperation in the irritable breast of Mr. Pegler, who 
has twice petitioned the St. Clement Danes’ Vestry for its 
removal; but it forms a constant source of amusement to 
the native children, who not only use it as a swing, but— 
regardless of the invalid, not to say wounded, aspect, which 
its rusty, gaping hinges expose—find delight in the screech, 
as of pain, which it is in the habit of giving when moved, 
and vary the direction in which it is tortured, until they 
produce a perfect gamut of lamentation. 

The other day, after safely making the passage of Clare 
Market, I plucked up courage, passed this feeble portcullis, 
and found myself in company with a wondering herd of 
the aforesaid children, between two rows of liigli-shouldered, 
thin, closely-fitting tenements. There were a baker’s dozen 
of them; hut number thirteen w r as wanting, a duplicate 
number nine taking its place. They were all what we must 
very inaptly call “ private houses,” with one exception; 
number six was a milk-shop. 

My curiosity having carried me into further scrutiny, I 
noticed that all the houses were in had repair; the fronts 
wanted pointing, the coping-stones were broken, the majority 

of the window-sashes were obstinately askew, those zigzag 
100 




















Up a Court. 


cracks significant of rickety walls abounded, and the pro¬ 
prietors seemed to have expended their rents on nothing 
but chimney-pots : in those articles they had been somewhat 
profuse, having indulged their fancy in a variety of sorts and 
sizes—square, round, short, “ Tallboys,” cowls and other 
curiously ugly shapes. As if in an ineffectual attempt to hide 
the dilapidated walls, the tenants had thrown out a kind of 
rash of shabby notice-boards, square, triangular, Y-shaped 
and round, with one oval of light blue having a composition 
border a great deal the worse for wear. The inscriptions were 
terse and explicit, though the letters wore a straggling, 
staggering, dissipated aspect: “ Mangling done here; ” 
“ Carpets beat;” “Working Bookbinder;” “Tailor— 
gentlemen’s own materials made up; ” “ Shoemaker —repairs 
neatly executed; ” and included a “ Monthly Nurse,” of 
course. The houses were of that description so often orna¬ 
mented with a miniature five-barred gate and palings painted 
green at the first-floor window, a large and dangerous-looking 
collection of flower-pots at the second, and a clothes-pole pro¬ 
truding from the third ; the doors are always ajar, and the 
door-posts rounded off with much leaning; lodgers are always 
looking out of the windows, and a baby tied in its chair is 
amusing itself by looking out; while a whole family of small 
children in the second floor may be seen performing the 
two first acts of the “Seven Ages” upon the table, which 
they have dragged up to the window that it may furnish them 


101 











Up a Court . 


with audience and proscenium ; there is a man smoking his 
pipe out of the third floor, as might he expected; and pigeons, 
peeping demurely from their skeleton houses on the roof, are 
arranging their next flight among themselves. 

The pavement is uneven and broken, one paving-stone in 
the farther corner leaning edgewise against the dead wall, as 
if the pavior, having a doubt on his mind, had left in that 
undecided state and never come back. Gratings admit 
gleams of light to the kitchens; that of the house up in the 
corner having bars so wide apart as to be a terror to the little 
children, who get their legs down and feet twisted once a 
week, on the average; but one, the most respectable house. 
No. 4, has no grating, but real railings and an open “airey;” 
a distinction also enjoyed by the milk-shop. This last is 
adorned with a wooden half-door of lattice-work, a model 
of a cow in ominous chalk, a large nettle geranium, and a 
cracked notice glass, between two dusty, moss-covered baskets. 
A cat is always asleep in a corner of the window, and there 
is an empty and unfurnished appearance inside; even the 
solitary milk-can seeming to stand on the counter as if by 
accident. 

But although I had counted the houses and the inscrip¬ 
tions, the gratings and the milk-shop, I did not attempt to 
count the children—they were too many for me : I could 
only notice that every little girl who was not nursing a baby 
was either engaged upon crochet-work, or else fetching the beer. 




















































































Up a Court . 


Hie little boys, playing at “ high-barbaree,” in wliicli game 
only sharp running and a quick eye for a hiding-place were 
required, got on amicably enough ; but those urchins who 
indulged in “fly the garter ” were always quarrelling about 
the mystery of “ tucking in the twopenny ” or the art of 
“ laying a back; ” while the gamesters who hazarded buttons 
or marbles, generally wound up by accusing each other of 
“ ranking ” or cheating, prefacing their charge by the sarcastic 
remark of “ Oh, yes, I daresay.” 

Of the residents in this court, I fortunately found a ready 
and eloquent biographer in the person of Mr. Pegler, who com¬ 
menced with an autobiographical sketch of his own career. 

“ Name’s Pegler—Samuel Pegler, landlord of this house 
I’m leaning against. How did I get it ? I’ll tell you. I 
was a young chap at the time, finishing myself, as it were ; 
working with an older shopmate, and not working more 
than I could help, you may be bound; a little rackety, 
perhaps, and fonder of getting a bit of goose than of putting 
in the best of work; with an eye to the main chance, all 
the same. And although often finding myself, late at night, 
in at Tom Cribb’s parlour, and once laid up for three months 
after going to Vauxliall in an old coat I had put on wet 
after sponging up to make it look new, yet managing one 
winter (when a new fashion in wrap-rascals gave me a chance 
of putting by a few pounds) to set up for myself by taking 


o 


105 













Up a Court. 

these very parlours in which I now live. And I’m bothered 
if I didn’t take a wife as well: never mind about her, though, 
she is gone now, and a better woman never broke bread. 
I had one son by her, who’s a man now: hut that’s nothing 
to do with the house. 

“ As I said before, I took these two rooms, and I rented 
them of that old man you saw me shoulder off just now. 
He was landlord then—held the lease of this and the next, 
in which (No. 4 I mean) he carried on the trade of a cork- 
cutter. He was a highly respectable man, and quite the 
cock of the walk, I assure you. Many’s the time I’ve 
heard him :—‘ Pegler, the overseer said to me yesterday ; ’ 
or, ‘ I met one of the churchwardens this morning; ’ but 
neither churchwardens nor overseers have much to say to 
him now, unless it is about the small allowance he gets 
from the parish. However, matters were as I say, and I 
had been his tenant for a j^ear or two, when, finding out 
by means of a little cross-questioning and such like, that 
his lease was just upon out, as business was increasing, 
and no children a-coming as yet, I thought I might as well 
have a try for it myself; for although old Crouclier (that’s 
his name) had held it for twenty-one years, he didn’t live 
in it, and I did: and wliat’s more, it was a good letting 
house, and in pretty tidy repair; so off I trotted to the 
old lady who owns the court, without even tipping the wink 
to Crouclier, as you may suppose. 


106 














Up a Court. 


“ ‘ Well, my man,’ said she. She’s a very good sort of a 
woman—a widow—her name’s Quelch, and her husband was a 
retired publican. She’s got a nice little house up at Islington. 
4 Well, my man,’ said she, ‘ and what can I do for you ? ’ 

“ I soon let out what I wanted, and didn’t forget to put 
it in rather strong about the bad repair into which Croucher 
had let the house run. 

“ ‘ And,’ I finished, ‘ I’m a hit of a hand at painting, 
and so on, and the walls of the house are very sound ; so, 
if you’ll get your bricklayer to run up a fourth story on the 
top of the other three, and just see to the lath and plaster, 
I’ll paint and paper it, and put the sashes in myself, paying 
you a few pounds a year more into the bargain.’ 

“ This seemed to tickle the old lady, so she said she 
would think about it; and when she called a day or two 
after to look into the dilapidations,—she is rather sharp, 
you know,—and saw what a handy little place I had cut 
and contrived my parlours into—a turn-up bedstead let into 
a recess, looking like a cupboard, a sliopboard that let down 
against the wall when I wasn’t at work on it, and a dozen 
other little notions that I am rather good at—she made up 
her mind in my favour, which was a hit of goose for me. 

“Lord! how old Croucher did stomp and swear, to he 
sure, when he heard of it; he abused me up hill and down 
dale : hut I didn’t care for that. When he put his bony little 
fist into my face one morning, 


107 














Up a Court. 


“ ‘ Put it back into your pocket again,’ said I; ‘I should 
be sorry to hit a man so much under my own size.’ 

“ Of course, he made out a long story against me, and 
some of the neighbours, especially the old women, took his 
part. What did it matter ? I had as much right to try 
for the lease as he had, especially as I was already a tenant; 
and, what was more, I had got it. Mrs. Quelch ran up 
the fourth story for me. You see it still shows a little, 
and makes the house rather tall; but it is none the w T orse 
for that, that I know of; and here I’ve been ever since. 
It always lets ; I hardly ever have a room empty, and get 
my rent very well, considering. Some of them owe me a 
good deal, but I keep them up to the mark pretty sharp 
altogether, although there are some rum people in the house 
just now. 

“ Now my third-floor back, that wooden-legged man who 
has just gone in with a broom, he sweeps a crossing, and 
yet the lodgers call him ‘ mister.’ Why, I don’t know: 
he’s rather independent, and can read and write a bit: I 
suppose it’s because he don’t get into debt, nor swear, nor 
drink, like the rest of them; but at all events they say 
Mr. Britton, and I never heard him called by his Christian 
name since here he’s been. He was well-to-do before he 
got married, but a few months after that happened he fell 
down an open cellar-flap, and broke his leg: poor chap, 
when he came out of the hospital, he had lost his means 


108 













MU. BRITTON. 

109 


j 






















































































/ 


















. 










































































Up a Court. 


ol living, whatever it was, and the pawnbroker soon left 
him nothing hut his crutch and wooden leg; while, as if 
to add to his misery, his wife brought him a little girl. 

“ But he had real pluck, you see, and so much of it, 
that he shouldered a broom the very next morning, and 
hobbled olf to a handy crossing : not a birch-broom, mind 
you—that was where he drew the line; no, he got him a 
regular bass broom—scavenger’s, you know, with a handle 
as long as himself—and that brought him in a living. 
I don’t think it is a very good one : he pays me regu¬ 
larly enough; hut for all that, and although they keep 
themselves and their poor child as clean and tidy as 
possible, I can see with half an eye what a desperate 
struggle they have to make both ends meet. I caught 
sight of him last night, on the stairs, showing threepence 
ha’penny to the old night cabman, as his day’s earnings, 
and I daresay his wife was waiting patiently enough in the 
room above. 

“ Poor chap, how he does go on at his customers, as he 
calls them, when they neglect to give him his regular penny. 
It’s very funny, but when a gentleman gives him a copper, 
for some days running, lie seems to think he is selling 
him a walk over his clean stones, and ought to be paid for 
it; and so he ought, I think, for lie’s not a beggar : only 
it does sound curious to hear him talk like a tradesman. 
But what I admire about the man, more than his independ- 


111 



















Up a Court. 


ence, is tlie way lie looks after that child of his, a poor 
little object: she got what they call the rickets, and nothing 
will do her good hut plenty of fresh air. 

“ Now, we’re rather close in this court, you see, and poor 
Jane, the mother, so far broke her constitution in her confine¬ 
ment, that it is as much as she can do to try a little in the 
shirt line, now and then ; as for carrying the child about, she 
managed it twice, and the first time turned deadly sick, and 
had to hold on by the railings ; the second, she fainted clean 
away in the streets, with the poor child crying on her breast 
as she lay stretched on the pavement; so, as that wouldn’t 
answer, what did my man do ? Why, he scraped and saved 
through the long winter, till he got together seven and six¬ 
pence, with which he bought a little wicker-work peram¬ 
bulator, and, you may believe me or not as you please, hut 
every fine morning he gets up at four o’clock, washes and 
dresses the child, wheels her out round the fields, or even into 
the park, to give her a blow of fresh air, but always getting 
hack in time just to swallow a hit of breakfast, and catch his 
gentlemen before they go to office. And you may say as you 
like, hut I respect a man, whatever his station, who has so 
much good feeling about him. 

“Mind, I don’t mean to say that good-heartedness is 
scarce down here; there’s plenty of it about, though it is 
mixed up in general with something not quite so pretty to 
look at. I’ve known a good-natured boy to rob his father, 


112 


















































■ 



















. 




















































































































Up a Court. 


and few people ever came across a girl that went wrong who 
wasn’t as kind-hearted as Christmas. I’ve a lodger down in 
my kitchen, the mangle-woman Sally; she’s an oddity: a 
more kindly disposed person never lived; she’d go without 
the gown on her hack to do any one a service, and yet she’s 
such a slanderous, underhand backbiter, she’d make mischief 
through a brick wall. She was born in this court; her father 
was a moulder, and worked at a foundry hard by. He had a 
large family, and was very strict with them in his way; but 
not being much at home, and the mother an out-and-out bad 
one, the children all went wrong, more or less, except this 
Sally, and she’s such a simple soul that nobody could beat 
any harm into her. She used to lollop about the court, ready 
to nurse anybody’s baby, or run of anybody’s errands, always 
very dirty and neglected, fond of singing songs and dancing, 
in her half-silly way, and a first-rate hand at taking anybody 
off. So she grew up, every one looking upon her as a sort of 
natural, when one day, being then about four-and-twenty, she 
took herself off, and nobody knew where to. Search was 
made, but to no purpose, till after awhile Sally was quite 
forgotten. But lo and behold ye! about fifteen or sixteen 
years after, when father and mother, and sister and brother, 
were all dead or gone away, back she comes with a strapping- 
boy of her own, and money enough to buy the goodwill of 
the mangle downstairs, which was to let. Nobody could make 
head or tail of the rigmarole she told them, but everybody 


115 














Up a Court 


admired her bold, open-eyed son, as merry as a cricket, and 
as strong as a horse, who could help her turn the mangle, 
quiet all the squalling children by magic, make new toys for 
the urchins, keep a dog and a canary, and yet find time some¬ 
how to work at the hoot-closing with little Clams, who pigs on 
in the third-floor front, with a wife and seven children. The 
mangle-woman was called Sally again, although most of her 
old friends had moved. She was just the same as ever—as 
dirty, as silly, and as fond of doing anything for anybody; 
she knows all the popular songs before anybody else; she 
even gives us a dance when she is unusually merry; and, 
when very cross, imitations of her enemies. Indeed, as 
scarcely a week passes but somebody or the other offends her, 
we get to look upon her as a regular exhibition : and to see 
her acting—if you knew the people—would make you die a- 
laughing, that it would; but she works double-tides at her 
mangle all the same, and the only object of her life seems 
the hoarding of money for her son. She is always hiding it 
away in a magpie sort of a manner, inside the mangle, up the 
chimney, on the top of the house, and once in the back 
kitchen, our wash’us in fact. 

“ But talk of Sally’s acting, we had a performer till the 
other day; Fagg’s wife, a regular good one. Let any one say 
anything against her, that she knew of, and she’d fly into the 
court the first time she saw them there, hair streaming down, 
eyes a-sparkling, and such a tongue : she even quarrelled 


116 









Up a Court. 


with me once, and because I knew better than to bandy words 
with such a termagant, 

“ ‘ Stand out of my way, feller,’ said she; * you’re not fit 
to be my doormat! ’ 

“ That was her dignified style, you know; she had a very 
foul tongue in general, and especially to the women. Nobody 
liked her, unless it was Sally, and she always spoke ill of her 
behind her back. 

“ But behind their backs or to their faces Fagg’s wife 
spoke evil of everybody. Before she married Fagg she had 
been shopwoman at an eel-pie establishment in Drury Lane, 
and was a fine strapping girl enough, with a bright eye, a neat 
instep, and a good head of hair. We none of us liked her, 
but I saw what she was the first word she uttered. She 
didn’t care a button for Fagg, and why she ever married him 
I can’t think : whether she was tired of serving in the shop, 
or had been put out by some of her beaux—she had a good 
many; or whether she thought he was a good easy fool who 
would let her have all her own way, I can’t tell; but for one 
reason or another, perhaps for no reason at all, she married 
him on his small earnings, but bargained for a first floor. 
He, poor fellow, was just one of those chaps who try to 
conceal their weakness behind their coats; he dressed very 
neatly, called people by their name on first acquaintance, and 
said, ‘ Good morning,’ at two o’clock in the afternoon. 

“ 1 I’m assistant at an ’osier’s, in the Strand,’ said he 


117 

















Up a Court. 


to me, when he took my first-floor front, the week before 
the wedding-day. Assistant! He was light porter, with a 
very good character, sixteen shillings a week, and sleeping 
in the house—to he raised to one pound one on the occa¬ 
sion of his marriage, and living out, which didn’t bring him 
much comfort; for his wife was always away visiting when 
she should have been making the kettle boil, and never 
seemed to stop at home, indeed, unless she was in a bad 
temper. 

“ Altogether, from the very first, she led him a pretty life. 
What with her gadding out, her extravagance, and had temper, 
he had quite enough to put up with, I can tell you. How¬ 
ever, he did put up with it, and a great deal more, and only 
seemed the fonder of her after all—fetched her water up of a 
morning, before he went to shop, even scrubbed her floor 
and hlackleaded her grate for her; hut, of course, the more 
he did the more he might do, and I think the best thing 
that happened to him during his married life was the accident 
of slapping her face, when she had stopped out till two one 
morning, and was abusing him for having searched after her. 
This famous slap was not a very hard one, as I happen to 
know, for I heard it; hut it was sufficient to send her first 
into a screaming fit, then into old Sally’s kitchen, and after, 
at the mangle-woman’s suggestion, to Bow Street, for a 
warrant. Of course Mr. Henry didn’t give much credence 
to the wife’s story, the more especially as we went in a 


118 

















MR. CORNISH. 


120 






























































Up a Court. 


body from tlie court to speak up for the poor fellow; but 
the magistrate did just give him a word of advice. 

“ ‘ Young man,’ said he, ‘ you have been to blame; not 
for assaulting your wife—that has been contradicted by your 
witness—but for the foolish manner in which you have allowed 
her to have her own way; now, go home : you are discharged. 
If you can be as firm as you have been kind, you may live 
to thank me for a piece of good advice; and as for you,’ to 
the wife, ‘if I see you here again, I’m afraid it won’t be 
in the witness-box, so go away with your husband, and make 
amends to him while there’s time.’ 

“ Which was not bad preaching, if it could have been 
practised. I am afraid, poor fellow, if he had his bad bargain 
again, he would not know what to do with her; but after 
Mr. Henry’s sermon she bowed her head, walked out into 
Bow Street, and called a cab. 

Drive me a sixpenny mile away from this lot,’ said 
she, and jumped into the slioful. We all laughed but Fagg, 
and he, I think, was nearer crying. 

“Now there’s Cornish: lie’s another of those hen-pecked 
husbands, a little, mild, fair-skinned chap, with as many 
wrinkles in his face as there are days in the year: he works 
hard at his trade, which is what a good many do; but he 
also works hard at home, which most people don’t care about. 
I don’t think it’s because he is fond of it; indeed, I fancy 
he is naturally an idle sort of happy-go-lucky, but he is 


Q 


121 














Up a Court. 


very proud of liis wife and her abilities, and wliat’s more, 
very much afraid of her: she keeps a hard hand over him, 
although, funnily enough, in younger days he was very 
jealous of her, used to watch her about and come suddenly 
upon her at unexpected times in the day, would look fiercely 
at big men whom he suspected, and altogether made a fool 
of himself. But one evening Maria gave him a good 
hiding with the lieartli-broom, to his evident delight; it 
seemed to establish his faith in her honour, and now at 
the word of command he blacks the boots in the wasli’us, 
does odd carpentering about the place, turns the meat of a 
Sunday morning, and takes his wife out for a walk after 
dinner : lie’s a good little man, very kind to the little Clamses, 
though lie hasn’t much will of his own.” 




































































































IN TIIE SQUARE. 





EL GRATIA — the region where 
Aristocracy, Wealth, and Official 
Dignity cluster round the skirts 
of Royalty — the heart of Bel¬ 
gravia, with its stucco - fronted 
squares, its pillared porticoes, and 
grim gardens, is the chosen abode 
of the blue blood of England’s 
Nobility, and the mauve blood of 
Gentility and Success. Its 
denizens are not by any means 
idle, but ever ready for any work 
that can be done with gloves on. But this does not interfere 
with the promptings of the passions ; emotion, indeed, among 
the ladies is somewhat emphasized : Devotion is written with 
a large D, and Self-denial is a metaphysical principle. People 
with such an inborn love of synonyms use so many different 
words for similar things, that they have at last a perfect 
grammar of emotion ; while refinement—not redundancy— 


125 

















In the Square. 

of intellect so splits up tlie right thing into the lightest of 
right places, that a nod becomes better than a wink. They 
have a curious eclecticism that knows everything worth 
knowing, even to a certain dim idea of poverty as of the 
going without money, not often, indeed, as the going without 
food—knowing the hollow cheek as the result of worry, 
remorse, or disease, hut not as the outcome of hunger : which 
indeed, is considered a desirable thing to attain, being indi¬ 
cative of appetite. 

If not exactly the salt of the world, to them comes in its 
first strength and out-burst genius and power; for not yet 
is it given for originality to appeal first-hand to what is 
called the “ people.” These, too, are our natural lawgivers; 
not as members of Parliament merely, hut as cliasteners and 
refiners of all our social and domestic instincts. 

Write up boldly for group the first—“ These are Gentle¬ 
men.” How curiously it looks, written ; it is as unsatis¬ 
factory as the key to a riddle-hook. We all ask, What is a 
gentleman ? and unconsciously say, A gentleman is one who 
never tells : he keeps the secret; and it is the only test. 
Negatively you feel when you are in his presence ; but the 
moment a man makes the effort to become a gentleman, that 
instant he ceases to he one at all. The very confession to 
himself gives an emphasis and unreality to all his actions ; 
and it is in this sense that the ploughman may be a gentle¬ 
man equally with the prince. 

126 










































































































In the Square . 


These are elderly gentlemen, members of the Carlton 
of course; for it is somehow natural to connect them with 
conservatism. We don’t care much more for an old Reformer, 
than for an old bridegroom. No—no: these presentments 
of mine have got over such youthful ardours long ago. 

There is a perilous bridge to the Roman nose that starts 
out full from the forehead, as if it were a weapon with which 
to cleave a foe. It is supported by drooping eyelids that 
proclaim the disdain they affect to conceal, the whole sur¬ 
mounting a dominant mouth with underhung jaw, which 
vents assertions, hut never thoughts; speaks seldom, hut 
always orders ; the whiskers grow so near to the side of the 
mouth that they seem to drag it down into its arrogant 
curve. Such a face of necessity belongs to a tall, broad, 
domineering man, whose coat is buttoned, like a door always 
shut; who sits in the seat of honour, occupying the fore¬ 
ground of the picture, as usual, and as of course. He believes 
in everything that is essential to his own comfort and 
dignity; he is a “ horsy ” man, and a king at “ table ; ” but 
he is also of a domestic turn, in what he is pleased to call a 
“ patriarchal ” sense, being taskmaster to a certain number of 
highly educated serfs, whom he dignifies by the name of his 
“ family.” I believe he can he familiar—ay, even jovial— 
to his dependants, under certain restrictions of Ko-too; but 
woe betide the unhappy rebel who should dare to hold his 
own : he is cast out for ever. To do our proud man justice, 

R 129 















In the Square . 


liis character has a brighter side, and if he makes every 
one do as he bids them, on the other hand everything 
he does himself is straightway and at once accomplished. 
He, I imagine, is of all others the man desiderated in the 
old emblems where Occasion is represented “ bald behind ; ” 
he doubtless would have seized her by the forelock at once, if 
he had not first knocked her down. 

But another Roman bridge stands before us of a different 
sort. It belongs to what may well he called a convex face, 
convex nose, eye-sockets and lips, with a close mouth to hold 
the dignity in, hard whisky hair that brushes every way and 
never makes a fair parting. Pre-eminently dignified is the 
owner; he comes from an almost royal family, lias com¬ 
piled a very long and exhaustive history of something some¬ 
where, was intimately connected with Metternich, and is so 
looked up to in the House, that it is, he believes, only the 
exercise of self-denial that keeps him out of the cabinet. I 
wonder if a doubt ever crosses his mind, not anent his lineage 
or his reading, hut in regard to his understanding ? He has 
such a stuffy clioked-up way of viewing things, as if he had 
a bad cold in his perception, that we can hardly imagine so 
powerful a conceit existing in company with such a primitive 
cerebellum. 

This next nose, however, is no Roman; it is that of a satyr, 
blunt, and drawn down upon the upper lip, and it belongs to 
the inventor of a soup, to an epicure, and dinner-giver: his 


130 
















In the Square. 


loose lips, when fairly open and at work, seem more like the 
mouth of a meal-sack than that of a man ; his eyes are ever 
weeping as if for new dishes; his cheeks are pouches ; he 
is very well washed and brushed, and he holds his eyeglass 
like a spoon. But if the gourmand’s nose was too flat, our 
connoisseur’s is the reverse : it sticks out like a sign to 
an old curiosity-shop, while the powerful eyes bleared with 
much looking, the antique curl over the forehead, and the 
parchment face, folded like an old deed, keep it very good 
company. These professors of taste, if not very pleasant 
people to know, are just the people to meet; the one at his 
own table, the other in the midst of his collection. 

What a wonderful difference there is still between the 
town and the country gentleman. We are, perhaps, too apt 
to forget that it still exists; but it does, and I think of the 
two the countryman has the best of it. Your town-made 
man is so dogmatic—he knows a little about so many things, 
he lives so far beyond his income, he is so certain to patronize 
the things that are patronized, and to neglect the things that 
are neglected, while he pretends to an energetic opinion of 
his own—that we are apt to get a little tired of him; 
while the country gentleman, with his ruddy face and hearty 
laugh, is something fresh and pleasant to gaze upon. True, he 
is still a stickler for “old things bygone,” but he is daringly 
speculative on some points ; and although his hair has grown 
thin, after the fashion of his grandfather, from a too constant 


131 
















In the Square. 


smoothing with the palm of the hand, and notwithstanding 
that his whiskers are shaved off in a line with the corners 
of his mouth, as was the custom sixty years ago, he has 
some ideas of his own about cattle-feeding, drainage, and 
the proper use of the plough, that would astonish even 
Mr. Thorley and Alderman Mechi. 

/ 

But turn to the young swells, also club-men, and their 
real points of strength don’t at all strike you. Instead of the 
nerve and sinew which is there, and well looked after too, 
you see the Bight Hon. Sardanapalus Alcibiades, or at least 
the younger son, Mr. Boots. Every man seems like the 
improvident fellow w r ho sold three of his lumbar vertebrae, 
and was never able to sit upright afterwards ; they all lounge, 
and all seem so much ashamed of their limbs, that they 
hide them with consummate art in “ peg-top ” trousers and 
baggy coat-sleeves. The dejected way in which the elaborate 
whiskers hang down is as if each particular hair had com¬ 
mitted suicide, while the head of hair itself is so carefully 
parted down the middle and bunched up on each side that 
it seems ready to he torn off in two double handfuls, if ever 
the languid owner wakes up to despair. Their code of 
behaviour at its extreme never supposes a man to be quite 
awake; it expurgates all the s’s in ordinary conversation, 
and regards the “ aw haw ” as being somehow the safeguard 
of civilization. There is a certain quiet way of doing things 
among many; but unfortunately a large minority have an 


132 


























































































































v. 




































YOUNG GENTLEMEN. 




134 















































In the Square. 


equally quiet way of leaving things undone: these are 
generally the ladies’ men, by the way. 

Now the man sitting on the chair is not one of those to be 
trusted : he tells you he is, though, and especially does he 
tell the female sex; but you must not believe him any more 
for that. He is talking to a young officer who is turning 
his back to us with an elegant abandon, and listening 
to the man at the back who shows his teeth, and is one 
of the male gossips : for although everybody is well bred, 
and in good keeping, so to speak—although there is no 
violent contrast, no loud language, no turbid thought— 
there is a good deal of out-and-out scandal. Notwith¬ 
standing whiskers, teeth, and all, he spends half his life 
collecting personal anecdotes, and the other half in turning 
them into slander. But he is good-natured enough some¬ 
times, and has been known to travel to Paris and back 
twice within a week to help a friend out of an awkward 
scrape : full particulars of which, of course, he retailed 
afterwards with great glee. The one behind him smoking 
the cigar is of a different stamp. He is not intellectual, 
he can’t read books, nor is he fond of scandal, except as a 
listener ; but he likes good tobacco in both forms. He is 
an officer in the line; he went out to India during the 
late war, fought well, but did not like the climate; so 
having taken a town, he came home again, being satisfied, 
like most of them, with having done something skilfully, 


135 
















In the Square. 

which is a peculiarity of theirs:—they either shoot at long 
ranges, play billiards, climb mountains, or play on the 
piano or on Aunt Sally better than anybody else. I don’t 
mean to say these are our best men, but our best hardly 
belong to Belgravia; they are either fighting, diplomatizing, 
ciphering, or saving the nation ; in some w r ay or the other 
taking the inevitable glove off. For the real swell, when he 
has tilted his hat on to his nose, and applied three fingers 
to his neck ribbon or scarf, as may be, believes that it is 
his duty not to toil, hut to set the world a great example, 
by going to many parties, by imagining that he leads 
the fashion, and by getting married, perhaps: if he is 
ever fortunate enough to meet with a lady sufficiently rich, 
handsome, and accomplished for his fastidious taste. Nor is 
he afraid of owning the barrenness of his ambition. The 
man who is going out in the background pulling on his 
gloves, assured me that he was the originator of the thin 
umbrella. 

But I am afraid to speak of the young ladies. Whether 
it be a well-balanced figure, with large, but heavy eyes, deter¬ 
mined to achieve a great position and working hard in many 
ways to compass her ambition; or a charming young girl, 
appearing to be intellectual, a great novel-reader, a believer 
in poetasters, who wrote poetry herself and does not think 
much of it, and is sure to make a good wife some day; or 
a lazy, ringleted, charming, good-tempered, good-natured, 
136 










IN THE NURSERY. 


138 
























































In the Square . 


and ratlier stupid angel, who has the most bewildering 
acuteness of instinct; or the gentle lady, sweet-tempered 
and charitable, checking her natural impulse with the 
prudence of pure refinement, doing her duty nobly, yet 
scarcely knowing that she does it, and able, let us say, to 
be anything but angry; or the fast girl, with a high sense 
of position and a great love of ease, looking for a good 
rich husband, but at the same time sentimental enough to 
wish for a real lover; or the lady with the turned-up nose, 
full of spirit, passion, and fun, too fond of poetry and love- 
stories, and ashamed at being excited to tears by the least 
emotion whatever;—I leave them with a feeling of dis¬ 
heartened failure, trusting, after all, to the reader’s imagina¬ 
tion ; for if I admired them less, I believe I could draw 
them better. 

And the children, brought up in their secluded nurseries, 
are not much easier to depict. Perhaps their nurses or gover¬ 
nesses may understand them ; but they have such queer notions 
about things, and such a scared way of looking at strangers, 
that they are rather puzzling to male humanity. They some¬ 
times seem to me more like fairies than human beings. 
Never what we call vulgar, they are very, very often passionate 
—excepting when we see them kindly and self-possessed, like 
the little girl in the chair, the result of a kind mother 
vigilantly overlooking the nurse. 

But the kind mother does not always overlook the nurse 


139 






















In the Square . 


—indeed, cannot, in many instances; for servants at a certain 
altitude will not readily submit to overlooking: they know 
their place and privileges. 

I think sometimes that the worst evils in the train of 
riches are servants. What with the quiet impudence and 
supercilious civility of footman, the cringeing of the ready- 
willed and as ready-witted lady’s-maid, the hot temper of the 
cook, the dignity of the butler, and the perhaps drunkenness 
of the coachman, with the general results of a particular 
regard for mere personal appearance, I really thank Provi¬ 
dence sometimes for not having sent me a hundred thousand 
pounds. Perhaps, as I have not fallen across such a large 
sum yet, and as my slender household does not give me 
much trouble, I am not a good judge; but if I have not 
found the money, I have met the flunkey, and, to tell the 
truth, I don’t like him. He may be a very good servant, 
but he seems to have lost, or to have had taken out of him, 
some quality of self-respect, or nerve of manliness, that sends 
him away sipping cordials on the sly, while his brother, the 
ploughman, is getting muddled on honest beer. For how is 
it possible for any human being habitually to wear a face of 
impassible vacuity, to assume an air of formal subserviency, 
to seem to resent no insult, to appear imperturbably calm, and 
be seemingly all alacrity at all times, and further to bear with 
equanimity the gaudy badge of servitude, without taking secret 
revenge upon society which dooms him to such a fate ? 


140 





















IN THE KITCHEN. 


141 











































































































































/ 





































In the Square. 


When the flabby cheek contracts about the mouth, as if it 
were about to whistle without wind—when the two eyebrows 
form a gable—when the flour and the lard get on to the hair 
instead of into the pie-dish—I take it that man is only 
suited for the place he fills. The plush has subdued his 
soul to the quality of the Servants’ Hall. 



143 
































LONDON. 


PRINTED BY SMITH, ELDER AND CO., 
LITTLE GREEN ARBOUR COURT, OLD BAILEY, E.C. 


~ r F 633® 






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